C’est pas jojo. It’s a French expression that means things aren’t exactly swell. It’s not the thing you want popping into people’s heads if you’ve just opened a French restaurant called JoJo Eating House and Bar.

Last summer, when Laurent Poupart announced he would be introducing his new restaurant across from the Quadrangle in the fall, the news was pretty exciting. Dallas suffers from a dearth of decent French restaurants, and though Poupart wasn’t exactly a household name (and his place would be an “updated Euro eatery”), he brandished a glittering résumé featuring a four-year apprenticeship at Le Crocodile, a Michelin three-star restaurant in Strasbourg, France; stints at la Palme d’Or in Cannes and l’Auberge du Vieux Puits in France; and — most impressive of all — an executive sous-chef position under Christian Delouvrier at Les Célébrités, one of the finest French restaurants in New York City at the time (the restaurant closed in 1998).

Fashionable design firm Plan B was set to create the look of the dining room. Laurel Wimberg, the talented pastry chef who helped earn a four-star review at the erstwhile Craft Dallas, signed on to do the desserts.

Frankly, I couldn’t wait to check out JoJo, which opened in mid-November, and paid a visit in early December to see whether it might be a contender for The Best in DFW: New Restaurants of 2012.

It wasn’t.

I could forgive the flabby-skinned rotisserie chicken, the frites that went limp after five minutes on the table, the practically useless iPad wine list — even the chicken liver mousse that had turned bad (no, it shouldn’t fizz in the mouth). But the Caesar served with dressing on the side that tasted like Kraft and the fact that they couldn’t produce the seafood platters featured so prominently on the menu because they were out of shrimp indicated that in the best case, the restaurant hadn’t yet hit its stride.

I waited more than a month to return, but that visit — made when I’d normally be filing a review of a new place, two months after opening — was nearly as disappointing.

The dining room in the old Bella space is attractive. A pizza oven blazes in the open kitchen with counter seating and lots of shiny white tiles. Wine is displayed on dark wood shelves along a back wall with a long banquette. Four round booths in the center offer prime seating.

But every time the front door opened, icy wind blew in. That couldn’t have been fun for the scantily clad ladies near the windows.

We struggled mightily with the iPad wine list, whose dysfunctional software doesn’t let you do something as simple as search for white wines by the glass. After spending an eternity trying to find something affordable and mildly appealing (how I yearned for a paper list!), we requested a red from France’s Basque country for $46.

Another eon passed, and finally the bar director showed up, sheepishly explaining that the reason it took forever was that, if we remembered from our last visit, the restaurant had purchased a private cellar that included only single bottles of many of the wines. That first time, they were out of everything we tried to order. He was trying to find us another grenache, which he was unable to do; that was the cause of the delay. We told him we didn't need a grenache, that we were open to any Old World wine less than $60. Another long delay, and he brought us a bottle with a $90-plus price tag. No, we said, something closer to $50, please. What a colossal waste of time.

The food made matters worse. A very pretty scallop appetizer arrived tepid. The tentacles of an “a la plancha” octopus were dried out and cold. Mussels provençale were nearly dry, sitting atop a thin puddle of sauce. Mediocre lamb, chicken and steak all came with identical garnishes, haricots verts mixed with sliced, out-of-season asparagus and a pallid, flavorless provençale tomato; the lamb also came with what seemed to be mashed eggplant. The service was earnest, but there were lots of missteps.

Where was Gordon Ramsay when you needed him?

Fortunately, Poupart decided to chuck his menu; he started afresh with a new one in late February, decidedly more French, and somewhat more cheffy and ambitious.

Unfortunately, the food hasn’t improved much. I’ve puzzled through squishy, bland codfish “blini” — more like a fish cake leaking pieces of smoked trout. And scallop ravioli served, inexplicably, over risotto. Escargots, imported in cans from France, came to the table in shells. How odd that they’d be so bland, especially as they sat in puddles of salty garlic butter. Octopus a la plancha is still on the menu, and it was cold once again, and rubbery this time. It came on a perplexing garlic purée circled with hyper-salty miso-squid ink sauce that stuck to the plate.

Simpler starters are better, either the Caesar salad that’s now passable or, if you have very deep pockets, a $75 seafood platter that includes six each of boiled shrimp, gulf oysters on the half shell, mussels and raw clams, plus half a Dungeness crab and a small dish of lobster meat, along with cocktail and mignonette sauces and grated horseradish. For that price, though, one would expect some excellent North Atlantic oysters.

Though seafood is a stronger focus on the menu, the meat dishes have been somewhat more successful, from a decent 12-ounce rib-eye cooked medium-rare as ordered, to a Moroccan-spiced lamb shank with good flavor, to a crisply golden-brown pork schnitzel. Unfortunately, the lamb’s accompaniments — soupy couscous and a phoned-in vegetable garnish — were a bust.

Otherwise, chewy scallops came with those same vegetables; nicely cooked seared halibut was set on a red curry sauce ruined by capers; bouillabaisse, which the menu calls “traditional,” was a sad approximation. No, salmon does not go in a bouillabaisse. At least the broth was decent the second time I tasted it, though the rouille meant to be spread on croutons and floated on the broth had an oddly grainy texture, much like hummus, and very little flavor. It’s supposed to be a glossy, garlicky emulsion spiked with cayenne and scented with saffron. This was just a drag.

It’s hard to imagine how a French chef with Poupart’s credentials could send out plates like these.

A simple dessert could offer a little solace: There’s nothing wrong with JoJo’s dainty molten chocolate cake served with commercial vanilla gelato, or its maple- and almond-flavored crème brûlée duo.

But if you’re looking for something much more original, you’re out of luck: Pastry chef Wimberg has left the building.

Service: What the servers might lack in experience they make up for in attention and effort. But they could definitely use some training about food and wine, and the wine service is absolutely maddening. Any restaurant that offers only a dysfunctional iPad wine list needs to have someone on hand who knows what’s in the cellar and can convey the information without disappearing for half an hour.

Ambience: An attractive modern bistro with four central round booths, a banquette along one wall, an open kitchen and inviting bar

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